Sunday, April 15, 2007

Appellate ruling, part 2

My appellate decision was "certified for partial publication". This means that it will be published in book form, and appear in law libraries. The word "partial" means that one section will be excluded from publication.

At first I thought that the court put private financial data in that section, and publish all the legal analysis. But no, it turns out that the one section excluded was a decision on a relatively minor issue involving attorney fees.

That section will not be published because of this sentence:

Although the court at one point credited the $6,500 payment against the $20,000 order, it appears to have been a mistake.

What happened was that Judge Kelly credited me with paying $6,500 in attorney fees, but Comm. Joseph said that I had to pay the money again anyway. The only way the appellate court could justify making me pay the fees again was to assume that Judge Kelly made a mistake. So I guess that the appellate court did not want the public record to show that Judge Kelly made a mistake.

I contended that Judge Kelly did not make a mistake, and Judge Kelly never admitted to making a mistake. I think that it is really slimy that Comm. Joseph and the three appellate judges want to make me pay $6,500 based on some theory that Judge Kelly made a mistake, but they aren't willing to go on the record saying that he made a mistake.